ustxtxb_obs_1971_11_19_50_00016-00000_000.pdf

tobacco’s best hope for future profitability, and in that sense it is in the cigarette industry’s best interest to promote marijuana. In certain obvious respects the tobacco companies are involved in the grass trade. Brown & Williamson recently introduced a cigarette rolling machine called Laredo, which enables one to make his own filter Personal Service Quality Insurance ALICE ANDERSON AGENCY INSURANCE & REAL ESTATE 808A E. 46th, Austin, Texas 465-6577 16 The Texas Observer The children wait REGISTER .;.: BUMPERSTRIPS: 4 for 50c, 15 for $1, 100 for $3, 500 for $14, 1,000 for $25. Send check and Zip Code; we pay postage and tax. lip FUTURA PRESS INC Phone 512/442-7836 1714 SOUTH CONGRESS P.O. BOX 3485 AUSTIN. TFXAC * cigarettes at half the cost. Brown & Williamson says it’s not possible to roll joints on their machine. And tobacco companies insist the boom in rolling machines is an indication of the “austerity measures” employed by avid smokers who want to save money in the recession. When a head shop operator in Washington was asked whether the Brown & Williamson machine was used for rolling joints, he looked incredulous: “What else would you use it for?” Incredible! The courts must arbitrate The right of a working man to grow a beard, . While in the streets and shelters children wait To plead their right to live and grow unseare d By bigotry, by cancer or napalm. While we like misers thumb our right to hate, We spend our brains in court without a qualm. Asking only love, the children wait. Miriam C. Maloy Aptos, Calif .a THE US TOBACCO Company has an edge in the paper business through its license for distribution of Zig-Zag papers, a big item. Last year cigarette papers sold at record highs: 240 million packets. More than half that number are estimated to have been used for rolling joints. Within the tobacco industry some argue that marijuana actually may have helped boost cigarette sales, which, despite the ban on TV advertising, have not declined. These marketing enthusiasts claim the two habits complement one another. Some older smokers labored for years to quit smoking cigarettes. Then they started smoking marijuana, and now they are back smoking cigarettes when not smoking grass. Per capita consumption of cigarettes held steady during the past two years. Adult smokers have decreased in number \(in that group more men stopped smoking girls, are smoking cigarettes more than ever before. In 1968, 14.7% of all teenage girls were regular smokers. By 1970, 18.5% of all girls were smoking regularly. This statistic delights the cigarette people. They hope it means a correlation between grass and tobacco, for surely many women were smoking grass as well. At any rate, the tobacco companies are hard after the woman market, with special cigarettes such as Virginia Slims and Eve. \(Recently the tobacco companies went after the gay market with Silva Thins, American Brands new cigarette for men. L&M is test marketing a man’s cigarette, wrapped in brown paper, and this one to be called Two companies most persistently rumored to be interested in the grass market are Phillip Morris and American Brands. Both deny it. The Tobacco Institute officials insist all this is nonsense, but curiously they really prove the reverse. They point out that grass is a cottage industry, so cheap to produce and manufacture, that no sane tobacco company would bother getting into the business. It would be impossible to control or manipulate the market in such a business. Even if it were possible, people wouldn’t consume enough joints of grass to make it economically interesting for the tobacco companies. It’s more likely, they say, that grass’ worst enemy is liquor, and that tobacco and grass really complement one another.